Censorship concerns over Olympic trademarks bill

http://www.straight.com/article-77756/news-from-the-art-world

A new federal bill aimed at protecting trademarks of the 2010 Winter Olympics has raised red flags among local artists and legal groups. Bill C-47 , which was introduced by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier and passed its first reading in the House of Commons on March 2, prohibits the use of certain Olympic-associated symbols, slogans, and phrases in connection with businesses that are not official Olympic sponsors. The bill also prohibits the use of "a mark that so nearly resembles an Olympic or Paralympic mark as to be likely to be mistaken for it".

Martha Rans , lawyer and legal director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture's Artists Legal Outreach, told the Straight she has a number of concerns about the legislation. "The problem with the act, overall, is its breadth and the potential that people could run afoul of it without meaning to," she said. "I'd be very concerned if I was perhaps already using sport motifs, that I might find some of my images censored."

In addition to referring to proprietary symbols, slogans, and phrases, the bill sets out two lists of words and expressions; those on one list cannot be used in conjunction with those on the other. These include Games , 21st , and Tenth on one list and Winter , Vancouver , and Gold on the other.

The act does allow a number of excepted uses, including news reports and "purposes of criticism", but does not explicitly exempt comedians, satirists, filmmakers, musicians, or visual artists. "Certainly [for] humorists, satirists, legitimate artists wanting to paint legitimate pictures of Olympic events, photographers–there may be clearly some tricky issues," said Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles , executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture .

Legislation similar to Bill C-47 was enacted in Australia for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. As a result, an Australian animal-rights activist was forced to stop distributing T-shirts that depicted a hen in a cage with five eggs, because the Australian Olympic Committee believed the eggs resembled the five-ring symbol.

Rans is concerned that artists in the city will not have the means to fight back if served with cease-and-desist letters from VANOC. "The difference between here and Australia is that Australia has six solicitors who work full-time providing legal advice and representations to artists," she noted. "If somebody was on the receiving end of some kind of action by the Sydney Games, they were able to fight it without going into bankruptcy.…Most artists, theatre companies, any of those entities [in Vancouver]–where would they find the $5,000 to $10,000 minimum that it would cost to retain a lawyer in private practice in this city?"

Rans said she is particularly concerned about a section of the legislation that allows a court to direct the federal minister of public safety to detain imported wares, with or without notice, if they violate the terms of the act prohibiting the unauthorized use of trademarks.

"If you really want to get Orwellian about it, you can think, 'Jeez, I've written a book describing the egregiousness of the Olympics, and emblazoned on the cover of the book are Olympic rings,'" she said. "That provision would give somebody the opportunity to get an order [to detain the books], without even giving notice to the publisher, who's importing the books from China because they've outsourced the printing."

Bill Cooper , director of corporate rights and management for VANOC, insisted the new legislation was drafted to target ambush marketing, not artists. "We feel that those groups [artists, satirists, and humorists] are more than adequately protected because the bill doesn't speak to diminishing their wherewithal and, more importantly, because we have absolutely no intent to pursue that, because it would not help us at all," he told the Straight . "It would certainly not behoove us to be seen to be, in any way, stifling artistic expression."